


I'm Afraid Pillowfort Is Doomed: Part 1 - Money

by Elf (Elfwreck)



Series: Pillowfort Thoughts [2]
Category: No Fandom
Genre: From Dreamwidth, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Social Media, pillowfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:35:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24137467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elfwreck/pseuds/Elf
Summary: Pillowfort has some interesting features, including some that are unique in my experience of social media sites. Unfortunately, they have no plan for income other than the endless pyramid scheme of "get new people to pay to join."
Series: Pillowfort Thoughts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1741846
Kudos: 1





	I'm Afraid Pillowfort Is Doomed: Part 1 - Money

(crossposted from Pillowfort)  
I'm also afraid that, by making this post, people are going to assume I hate Pillowfort, or that I have no hope for it, or that I'm not "giving it a chance," or some other variation of the standard reactions people have to critiques of something they care about. But I'm positive that Pillowfort can't survive if some issues aren't addressed, so I want to bring them up.

(This was initially going to be a 3-part post: Money, Admin Policies, User Conflicts. After I wrote more than 1000 words on money, I realized it should be split, in part because I'm too tired to write the others immediately, and in part because this is a lot to go over at once. I'll edit this later with links to Part 2 and Part 3, and more if needed.)

**MONEY**

Pillowfort will not survive without an ongoing revenue stream. I know that the devs are considering **advertising** , and I think this is a very bad idea, because I strongly agree with the points synecdochic at DW (she's the founder) brought up in [Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure (part one)](https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/234496.html). Advertising on social media is a constant state of conflict between advertisers, who want people to pay attention to their stuff so that those people might buy stuff, and the users, who want to see what their friends and random interesting people have posted. This is exacerbated by modern desires for privacy, especially in marginalized groups, to which Pillowfort is intended to be a haven. 

There is also a big conflict between advertising and sexually explicit content of any sort, and to a lesser extent, between advertising and any kind of controversial content, including political content. Advertisers want to pay for access to eyeballs that are sympathetic to their content, which means both privacy invasions and a demand that disinterested users don't see their ads. It may mean a demand that "bad" content never appears next to their ads: see also, [Warriors for Innocence](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Warriors_for_Innocence), who were behind Strikethrough.

The other main option is **subscriptions**. That's what Dreamwidth uses, and it works for them. However, part of how it works is not having much image hosting, which is expensive. DW manages by knowing exactly how much free blog content each paid blog is supporting - what ratio they need of free to paid. Many sites want users to treat the free version as a "trial version" - if you like it here, you'll eventually pay. This can lead to guilting the free users, and denying them access to even discussing features. (See: Roll20.net.) This guarantees that your poor users - who may be amazingly prolific and creative social network builders - aren't invested in the long-term survival of the site, and may feel enough like second-class citizens that they look for other platforms. 

A third option is **donations**. AO3 survives entirely on donations. However, AO3 is managed by a nonprofit group with no intention to make a profit; its board and staff aren't trying to do it instead of having day jobs. Metafilter also takes donations, and it's not a nonprofit. (And it's currently in financial trouble, as revenue has dropped below server activity costs.) Donations can help, but they're pretty damn shaky as a sustenance model for anything that doesn't offer tax benefits to donors.

Overall, I tend to think "premium features for paid subscribers" is the best plan. This comes with a set of problems: What features are going to be premium, and how will the lack of those features affect free users?

PF has a biiiig problem around **premium features** : The _basic_ features aren't here yet. There's been almost no discussion, and even less from staff, about what features could or should be paid-only, other than maybe hi-res image hosting. (And what happens when a subscription lapses? Do those images get shrunk? Get removed?)

My brainstorming thoughts about what could be premium:

  * High-res images, possibly replaced with a placeholder "click to see image on a separate page" filler if the account goes back to basic, to reduce bandwidth
  * Blog customization beyond color changes - maybe a few templates similar to what Dreamwidth offers, maybe some image hosting for backgrounds 
  * Archiving - ability to download your blog and community blogs that you own as PDFs
  * Dashboard filters - show only individuals, or only communities. Or show only original posts, not reblogs
  * Sideblogs - maybe free users get none; maybe they get 1-3 and paid users get more
  * Name changes - unlike Tumblr's free "change you ID anytime you want, to anything not taken," PF might go with Dreamwidth's "name change costs money" system. 



Another option is limiting some of the current functions, taking away features people currently have and moving them to premium-only. This would, of course, create some outcry, but if the features aren't used much right now, it might work out. These include:

  * Unlimited community ownership - free blogs can manage 3-5 communities; paid blogs can manage any number
  * Unlimited friends/follows - free blogs get a limit of a hundred (? couple hundred, maybe?); paid blogs have a much higher limit
  * Images-per-day limits for free users
  * Reblogs-per-day limits for free users - encourage more original content (This is not likely to happen, and if it does the limit should be something like 100 reblogs, not 5 or a dozen or 20.)



Any new limitations should be something that many casual users would never notice, and many of those who do, would shrug and accept them. And they should all be something that relates to actual costs of running the place: server activity, image hosting, database pings, and so on.

A number of sites do "ads for not-logged-in people; no ads for members." This is especially common with paid memberships, and PF might institute that - anyone who wants to be here without ads can fork over $5 for a one-time membership, and actual site users may have the free/paid tiers, but they're not dealing with ads. However, ad money raised by this method tends to be limited, as the hits from non-users aren't well targeted. It's more successful on focused-purpose sites than general social ones: Metafilter does this, because it's got an extensive "asks" section where people want to read the answers that have been built over time, and Mobileread does it, because they have info about ebooks that people want but may not care to discuss anything. (Mobileread doesn't charge money for memberships. I think they take donations, but I've never been sure.) I don't think "ads for non-members" would work here; the site's not designed for nonmember browsing, and many people will want more privacy options as soon as those are available.

Things I do NOT recommend:

  * Paid users get more privacy options
  * Paid users get better PM/DM options
  * Paid users get better block filters
  * Anything that limits feedback from and admin communication with free users
  * Free as a trial period of 3 months-1 year, with paid being required for participation after that



Anyone who thinks that "PF is awesome; anyone should be willing to fork over $5-10 a month for it" is missing the point. Not just that some people flat-out can't (including minors who don't have access to credit cards), but that people _won't_. Yes, $5-10 is the cost of a fast-food meal. No, people will not just add it to their monthly expenses - in part because of data security issues, but mostly, because the question is going to be, "why should I pay you for what I get at [other site] for free?" 

It doesn't matter how many bells & whistles Pillowfort gets; what will bring people in is the community. And PF can't monetize the fannish community. (It's been tried. It always goes sour very quickly.) Making money from hosting fannish activity: Fine. Making money by selling access to fannish activity to other users: NOT fine, and fans will put up with it exactly long enough to find another platform that doesn't creep them out.

So. Money. Money is a big problem, one that gets worse as PF gets more popular, and one that has no solution templates to borrow from. DW is apparently doing okay, but is smaller than PF wants to be, and doesn't have strong image hosting. And that's about the only social media site that's not scrambling to play the money game.


End file.
